Tag Archives: winter

In honor of it being almost Christmas, I thought I’d share some healthy living tips with you. It seems to be the thing to do.

So here friends, is how I stay healthy at Christmas:

1. I’m about 95% sure that elastic waist pants coming into style are proof God wants us to enjoy Christmas. Jeggings are like $15 at forever 21. Give yourself a Merry Christmas
2. Holiday drinking. Do it. If you do enough of it, you won’t care if your non-elastic waist pants fit!
3. Winter is cold. Embrace being part bear. Know what bears do to be ready for the winter? They eat. Eating makes you less cold. No one likes being cold.

4. Worried about calories? Make cookies with a small child. Watching them pick their nose and then touch the cookies is a great appetite suppressant.
(Unless you’re me. Then you still eat them.)

5. Walking is exercise. You have to walk when you’re shopping. This means the more you shop, the healthier you’ll be! If you finish shopping for others, get something for yourself. Jeggings perhaps?

6. Rather than getting a calorie filled peppermint mocha, get a plain latte, and sweeten it yourself.

(Source– although to be totally honest, there’s some in my house. I’m just to lazy to go take a picture of it.)

With peppermint schnapps.

7. Watching someone else put up Christmas lights can do a great job of raising your heart rate!

It’s like cardio, but without having to move!

8. Rock out.

Burns calories + everyone is full of schnapps so there’s no judging!

and finally….

9. Don’t stress about it. Stress gives you wrinkles. I’d pick an extra 10 pounds over needing botox.
This concludes my one and only healthy living tips post.

(I know it feels like winter outside… but technically it hasn’t started, so I’m not behind.)

I had to clean up the freezer to better hold my winter supplies.

Because winter makes me do things. Things like buying six pounds of cheese
And shredding it. And freezing it in nice little 8 oz baggies.

(Thankfully, I can successfully use a food processor. Unlike an immersion blender I am capable of using a food processor without making myself bleed.)

And acquiring things like sixteen pounds of beef bones!
(One of my older brothers told me over thanksgiving “Kalin I have some beef bones if you want”. That’s a normal conversation you have with your siblings right?)

Carting those home made me feel a bit like Dexter.

I roasted them
And made into stock.
My freezer isn’t just cheese and bones though.
I also paraboiled sweet potato cubes and froze them. And made mashed sweet potatoes and froze those too.

And I horde vegetable scraps like it’s my job
My husband will try to toss those and get yelled at “I’m saving those for stock!”

Not weird at all.

There might also be a 20 pound turkey in my freezer. But we’re all going to play a game called “not judging” and act like that’s normal.

I do use what I put in the freezer though, so we don’t need to call Horders quite yet.

The other day I grabbed out some chicken, breadcrumbs (I put the ends of loaves of bread through the magic bullet then throw them in a ziplock in the freezer. Is that weird? I honestly don’t know.) and a bag of sweet potatoes. I stuck them in the fridge to thaw before I left for work.

Post work I mixed up spices
Added breadcrumbs, and coated the chicken. Into the oven with the sweet potatoes
And dinner is ready in like 20 minutes.
It’s a beautiful thing.

Is anyone else a freezer horder? I swear, outside of eggs, milk, and spinach we could go for months without grocery shopping. That sucker is PACKED